Move Over, ISIS: The New 'Enemy of the American People' Is NBC News

It was a wild weekend for conservatism and the Family Values™ Crowd. So just in case this was lost in the outrage cacophony, the President of the United States denounced the American press as "enemies of the American people" Friday. This authoritarian salvo wasn't actually a Trump original—it's a remix of an old-school track out of the Soviet Union from Vladimir Lenin. White House Senior Adviser Steve Bannon once reportedly described himself as a "Leninist." Communist dictators: the new Founding Fathers!

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Anyway, this tweet-based denunciation of The Enemy Within got Stephen Colbert's attention last night. He wanted to take the opportunity to console the more traditional bearers of the "enemy of the American people" label—like, say, ISIS—on losing the title:

You might remember that last month a senior White House official deemed the media "the opposition party." As Republican Maverick John McCain pointed out in a clip Colbert shared, this is kind of Dictator 101. (This is just the latest example of the Arizona senator questioning the administration's rhetoric and policy on TV. Now, if only he'd use his actual power to stop its agenda.) The Trump White House has waged a near-constant war on the free press and the independent judiciary, two fundamental checks on the power of the executive. Much of that rhetoric has involved attempts to delegitimize those institutions, possibly in a prelude to an attempt to attack them through policy.

But while ISIS might have to make do with No. 2 on the public enemy list behind NBC News, the president is still very afraid of Muslim immigration. He and his administration are so terrified, in fact, that they're hallucinating. First there was the Bowling Green Massacre, and now there's...Sweden. Colbert had time for that one, too last night: